Yugalageetam

Yugalageetam is a story that aims to deal with the 7,486 problems and growing-up pangs being faced by the current muddle-headed generation. But everyone knows that there is no way just one movie can deal with 7,486 problems without goofing up. Hence, Yugalageetam decides to be sensible and chooses to deal with just 7,485.

The story is about this bunch of run-of-the-mill college students. The girls and guys in the gang are hitched to one another, and everyone hangs out at coffee shops, discos, pubs, college canteens and parks. Interestingly, they never miss college. That's because it is on their way to all these places.

But for all that, none of them is really harmful or offensive. They're just being teenagers. Now everyone knows it is tough being a teenager. For example, one girl's parents are career-minded and don't have time for her, causing her to have Coke everyday for dinner. Another girl likes to wear skimpy clothes so that instead of looking like a traditional middle-class Indian citizen she can look like a traditional middle-class sub-Saharan citizen, but her father doesn't agree. As for the guys, they don't have problems. They are the problems, and their parents put up with them.

One day, one of the girls Ananya is raped, and her boyfriend beaten up. After that, she's ostracized by society. Though her friends intend to help her, everything else plays spoilsport, especially their dialogue delivery. She's thrown out of her rented house, and she's sneered at by her friends' parents. There is much talk of "chedipoyina ammayi", and comments on how girls nowadays invite rapes on themselves by roaming around wherever they wish.

After enduring nonsense of an incredible magnitude, Ananya is shattered, but in the end, lets the rapist go free. She says that while the villain only raped her body once, society raped her soul repeatedly. The courtroom scene makes for a moving conclusion. But for an audience that moves out after it finds the "Interval" message more moving, the ending doesn't have much impact.

Yugalageetam has its heart in its right place, but its elementary writing does it in. It aims to address several issues - including the saffron brigade's forced marriages on Valentine's Day, teenagers' dressing, commitment to relationships, rape - with the élan of a tele-serial whose commercial breaks feature latest innovations in seed technology. Its dialogue won't kill you, but won't light 1,000-watt bulbs in your thought balloons either. There's some comic relief in parts, though.

The lead cast is filled with new faces, who are eager - a few of the girls act well, too. The supporting artistes - including Chandramohan, Ahuti Prasad, AVS, M S Narayana and Hema - manage to keep the only 10 people in the audience from walking out. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the film to make the next ten come in.

The presence of some of the sequences could have been pardoned if they didn't call them songs. The production values are pretty low, but not too abysmal apparently - there's some decent casting that helps gain respect for the film.

In all, Yugalageetam is not a good alternative to you shooting your own scenes and calling them a movie.